1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming system, image forming system, and image forming processing apparatus. More particularly, the present invention relates to an image forming system and image processing apparatus where restrictions may be placed on the printing or outputting of image forming data. Further, the present invention relates to a printing system in which restriction is lifted temporarily depending on the circumstances.
2. Description of the Related Art
With proliferation of printers, anyone can access to a printer for printing out his/her document, the amount of print-out without restraint is becoming increasingly concerned. One way of solving this problem is to allow only authorized users to use a printer or to assign individual user a quota on pages to print for the user. JP 2005-193560A discloses one such system.
Conventional methods of restricting the amount of print-out to a certain number of pages suffers from a problem in that when the maximum number of pages assigned to the user has been reached, a user may not be allowed to print even if a user is desperate to print immediately. This is inconvenient.
JP 2004-345203A discloses a printing system in which users are restricted the use of the printing system. Such a printing system may be installed at a public location such as a computer center of university where many people want to print for various purposes, and allows a large number of users to access under some restriction. If a printing system is installed at a computer center, only professors and teaching assistants may be allowed to print color images. Students may be restricted only to monochrome printing. Further, students may be forced to print in n-up printing.
With a conventional printing system, once a user is restricted the use of the printing system (e.g., color printing) the user is not allowed to perform color printing.